Robert A. Rushing
“TUTTO È ZUPPA!”: MAKING THE SUPEREGO ENJOY IN CALVINO’S IL CAVALIERE INESISTENTE
The Hollow Epic Il cavaliere inesistente [The Nonexistent Knight] tells the story of Agilulfo, one of the Emperor Charlemagne’s most dedicated knights. He is scrupulous in all things, from the procedures and rules governing combat to the polishing of his armor. It is, in fact, his armor that particularly attracts the Emperor’s attention. It is completely unscratched or marred in any way and covers Agil- ulfo from head to toe—no space, no matter how small, is left uncovered. It is also perfectly white, except for a thin black line that runs around the edge. In other words, it is an outline, a tracing of a knight more than an actual knight as such. Agilulfo’s shield is rather curious as well. It depicts a cloak whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose sides have been pulled open to reveal another cloak, whose—in short, it is the fgure known as a mise en abyme, the endlessly recursive image of a container that contains itself and so contains ultimately nothing. The question of content, in short, is always deferred to a later date, farther down. If Charlemagne is struck by Agilulfo’s armor, he is decidedly more struck when he fnally convinces the reluctant knight to open his helmet: there is nothing inside. Agilulfo, the nonexistent knight, is merely a suit of armor animated by, as he says to the Emperor, “la forza di volontà . . . e la fede nella nostra santa causa” [strength of will and faith in our holy cause!].1 We can see immediately some of the uses to which Calvino might (and generally does) put this fgure. In the meta- literary vein, Agilulfo represents a kind of pure formalism, a temptation that Calvino was certainly drawn to throughout his career, as a number of critics have pointed out.2 Surely this hollowed out form, evacuated of content,
1. Italo Calvino, Il cavaliere inesistente in Romanzi e racconti, vol. 1 (Milan: Monda- dori, 1991) 958. Further references will be given in the text. 2. Isn’t this precisely what Calvino has understood so well about Ariosto, that Or- lando furioso is effectively an empty (delightful, magnifcent) formalism? The space of the poem functions like a game board, where the individual pieces have no individual
The Romanic Review Volume 101 Number 3 © The Trustees of Columbia University